This document explains how to configure Cargo remote deployment support on a Jetty container.

Overview

By default, Jetty does not come with possibilities for remote deployment. In order to add such a support to Jetty, Cargo uses a "Jetty remote deployer" Web application.

This application is a simple servlet-based application which exposes methods such as deploy or undeploy on standard HTTP POST URLs. When thse HTTP methods are called, the servlet implementing these methods connects to the Jetty Server implementation and does deployment related actions on the server; this Web application can therefore be seen as a kind of remote administration proxy.

Being a standard Web application, the Cargo Jetty remote deployer application can be secured using Jetty users and roles.

Downloading the remote deployer

Two versions of the Jetty remote deployer WAR are available on the Cargo downloads page (scroll down to the Tools section):

cargo-jetty-7-and-onwards-deployer: The Deployer Web application for the Jetty remote containers, which must have been deployed to Jetty before using the CARGO remote deployer. Designed to work with Jetty 7.x and later (Jetty from Eclipse.org)

cargo-jetty-6-and-earlier-deployer: The Deployer Web application for the Jetty remote containers, which must have been deployed to Jetty before using the CARGO remote deployer. Designed to work with Jetty 6.x and earlier (Jetty from Mortbay.org)

Please make sure to download and install the correct flavour for your Jetty version.

Security

By default, the Cargo Jetty remote deployer comes with no security.

In order to activate security, follow these steps:

Open the WEB-INF/web.xml file of the Cargo Jetty remote deployer WAR

Uncomment the part that says Uncomment in order to activate security. By default, that configuration is as follows:

Authentication is done using standard HTTP headers: login-config set to BASIC.

Authorization is done using Jetty role: security-constraint has a auth-constraint with role-name.

Create a user with the Jetty role manager:

Open the Jetty realm.properties file

Add, for example, the following definition

To try the security settings, you can try to visit the /cargo-jetty-deployer context on your server, for example http://production27:8080/cargo-jetty-deployer, using any Web browser. If security is configured well, it should:

Ask for a login and password

Ask again if the login is not valid

If the login is valid, show a page saying: Command / is unknown

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Note: Jetty's website has documentation on hashing the password.

Examples

Here is an example Maven2 plugin configuration that:

Deploys on a remote Jetty 6.x server

The server is on production17, port 8080

The Jetty remote deployer WAR is secured using the Jetty role manager

A user called someusername with password somepassword is defined as manager

To run the given Maven2 plugin configuration on a simple Maven2 WAR project, simply execute:

Known issues

Unexpected end of file from server and maxIdleTime parameter

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By default, Jetty sets the maxIdleTime parameter in the etc/jetty.xml file 30 seconds. This means that if the actual deployment takes more than 30 seconds, you might get error messages like:

In this case, open the target Jetty container's etc/jetty.xml file and set the maxIdleTime parameter to longer. For example: